What a long day – a 7.30am wake up when the landlady of the pub we stayed in went to walk her dog at 7.30am and set off Archie and Rosie barking like mad (and probably waking the entire pub). Yesterday I mentioned that you get blasé about hotels when you do lots of business travel. One of the things the big chains of hotels NEVER get right is breakfast. Almost universally their breakfasts are ‘buffet style’ affairs with lukewarm, congealed food that looks and is unappetising and often downright disgusting.

At the Old Ferry Inn, we were served piping hot, very fresh (less than two days old) eggs, poached to perfection on hand sliced fresh granary bread toast. This is what staying in pubs gives you that all the money in the world can’t buy you at a Hyatt, Hilton or Holiday Inn.

After breakfast and walking dogs, a trip to buy furniture, followed by a stop off at Alan and Dee’s house to see their progress with their building work and see how big Maddie has got since we last saw her. We then ran for home, being chased all the way by rain clouds as black as could be and with rain tumbling out of them as though out of a bucket!

My day didn’t end there though, a trip into London (without DM) to see two of my oldest and closest friends, Colin and Paul and a gig at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). I see a fair amount of Colin but very little of Paul since he moved to Cheshire a few years ago. I think it’s possibly more than a year since I last saw him and that was only a short evening, while he was in Bracknell (a neighbouring town) on business overnight. We all met at the hotel that Paul was staying in, the exact polar opposite of my morning’s start in the Old Ferry Inn – he was at the Hotel Inter-Continental on London’s Park Lane – very swanky indeed. We had a couple of drinks in the bar, amid discreet lighting and with a Norah Jones sound-alike playing quietly in the background on a white grand piano.

After that, a short walk past Buckingham Palace to the ICA to see Edwyn Collins. Edwyn has always been among my top favourite artists. I first saw him play in 1983 at a small venue in Brixton (the Ace….now the Fridge) when they (Orange Juice) were just becoming successful and the show was recorded for TV. Since then I have probably seen him play 15-20 times over the years and Colin and I have always said you need to see him four times to be sure of seeing a good gig but when you see that good one it’s so good you’ll willingly take the three crap ones to see the good one. When he’s good, he is very good indeed.

Tonight was just such a good one. In fact, it was quite possibly the best gig I’ve seen him do. He claims to have left his shambolic past behind him and so far I'd say he's succeeded. Loads of Orange Juice stuff including their ‘anthem’ Rip It Up, which he refused to play for many years because he didn’t want to pander to the ‘one-hit-wonder’ brigade. When he had a massive global smash hit with A Girl Like You, he decided he could play both songs in his live set because he was no longer the ‘one-hit-wonder’ that people had written him off as.

This photo was taken half-way through his set during the middle eight of one of his numbers (I must confess to forgetting which) just to prove he is still ‘rock and roll’ enough to jump off the drum kit!!! This was a fantastic night, made perfect by seeing Colin and Paul – it was just like old times, boys.

Then what happened? I missed the last sensible train home and ended up on what we lovingly refer to as ‘the post train’, which meant an hour and a half on Waterloo Station – not the best place in the world at 1am on a Saturday morning and arrival at home at half-past two.

Phew, rock and roll!

See more of the gig here!